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Friday, August 31, 2012

The Doust Files - Albany Advertiser 28/8/201

I grew up just over the hill from the bush up the back of
our place in Bridgetown.

The bush was a place I visited whenever I came home after
boarding school, travel, or life in the Big Swirl, Perth.

My grandfather, Roy Doust, grew up in the bush, played with
the local Googliupmob, hunted, fished,
camped, observed.

He remembered well the Googliup people laughing at his
ignorance, but by the time I was born he knew more than most.

It was him who taught us the evil ways of the kookaburra,
the bird introduced from Victoria to clean up the much feared snake population.
Roy claimed the kookaburra was the greatest destroyer of native fauna, second
only to humans.

We hunted a range of animals, rabbits, kangaroos, fish, but
nothing got our blood boiling like a kookaburra.

In 1972, while sitting on his veranda, Roy said: “We’ve gone
too far, Jon. They have to stop clearing the bush now.”

If anyone knew when the time had come to stop, it was Roy,
his bush loving mates and the Googliup people.

Yet here we are, 41 years later, still clearing as though
leaving tiny pockets of bush will satisfy the birds and the bees and the rest
of us will soon forget we ever had a fight on our hands.

Roy loved Albany and once swam for his life when he was
washed into the ocean by a king wave. It is my firm belief that the plan for
Bayonet Head would look like another nail in another coffin to Roy and on his
behalf I hang my head in shame, for too many of us know not what we do.